He never seemed upset, Rynason thought, looking up at him. Except for
that one time when they'd run into the stone wall of the block on
Tebron, Horng had displayed a completely even temperament--unruffled,
calm, almost disinterested. But of course if the aliens had been
completely uninterested in the Earthmen's probings at their history they
would never have cooperated so readily; the Hirlaji were not animals to
be ordered about by the Earthmen. Probably the codification of their
history would prove useful to the aliens too; they had never arranged
the race memory into a very coherent order themselves.
Not that that was surprising, Rynason decided. The Hirlaji had no
written language--their telepathic abilities had made that
unnecessary--and organization of material into neatly outlined form was
a characteristic as much of the Earth languages as of Terran mentality.
Such organization was not a Hirlaji trait apparently, at least not now
in the twilight of their civilization. The huge aliens lived dimly
through these centuries, dreaming in their own way of the past .
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